Oil in the Gears
by Riversound
Summary: Funny how a little love can make things run smooth. (Are you kidding? With these two, the easy road doesn't even exist.) Oneshot series. Mainly KonoShin, with other pairings that change by the chapter.
1. Chapter 1: Breaths

To say that Kisaragi Shintaro is a geek would be an understatement. He is a dweeb. A closet dweller. A young man whose nerd cave is his entire world. A neet in the purest sense of the word, because he is most definitely Not in Education, Employment, or Training, and has absolutely no interest in entering any of them.

Shintaro understands people, but computers for him are a much more comfortable realm. Computers don't judge, label, or specify unless you tell them to. They make sense. That's why Ene is such a bother and such an anomaly. She's a computer program, but Shintaro has certainly never asked her to do any of the things she has done. If she were a normal program his life would be much, much easier.

Computers don't like. They don't prefer. They don't want. They don't care, they don't feel, they don't just are, and the way they are always makes sense, even if it isn't always clear immediately. That's why Ene can't truly be a part of a computer, not completely. She makes no sense, and she most definitely feels.

Computers don't breathe, either, which brings him to his current dilemma. Well, not truly a dilemma, because he already knows the answer, just answered it for himself a moment ago, but Shintaro's brain refuses to let it go. Computers don't breathe. Robots are forms of computers.

And yet Konoha is breathing.

Konoha is like Ene. He feels. He knows emotions, even if they aren't always expressed. He can care, feel, love. If he couldn't then Shintaro wouldn't be considering this right now, because he wouldn't be snuggled up against Konoha's chest feeling it rise and fall. Actually, he would probably be holed up in his room trying to ignore the rest of the Mekakushi Dan as they ransacked the house again at Momo's invitation.

(He'll take this option, thanks.)

Konoha is human enough, but he's android too, and the line sometimes confuses even Shintaro. His oblivious demeanor, the way he is sometimes so entirely clueless that it drives even Seto a little bit crazy, (Not that Seto isn't always crazy, but Konoha occasionally manages to invoke in him a different, more frightening brand of insanity) and his habit of focusing on one thing and only that one thing until he reaches the desired outcome (Usually the one thing is food, but Shintaro can work too) all add up to a rather robotic air. (Even if in reality computers know everything and can multitask better than any human, now is not time for technicalities.)

And those headphones! They make sense on Ene, because she's inside the computer and could probably put together an image of pulling her own head off with relative ease, but on Konoha it's sometimes a mystery how he can hear through a thick layer of soundproofing and plastic. It's even harder to believe when he manages to pick up the sound of a whisper from across the room and actually know what has been said. Shintaro plays with the idea that the headphones are actually mutated ears or something, but decides that it's a matter for another day, maybe when he already has a headache and intensifying it won't make much of a difference.

He's probably overthinking this. He does that a lot. He seeks a meaning behind stupid daily gestures that don't amount to anything and only succeeds in giving himself a new migraine just after the last one has vanished.

The best things don't need to be thought about, anyway. Like Konoha. Except now that stupid issue about the breathing still won't leave Shintaro alone, and he finds himself listening carefully and trying to make out the sound of a heart.

"Shin? You alright?"

Shnozzz… Of course Konoha would notice. For all his human aspects he's still part machine, and to machines details are a specialty. To him, a slight shift of position that would seem to anyone else to be insignificant must speak volumes.

Pulling away now would also speak volumes, and probably, what with Konoha's simplistic worldview, the wrong kind, so as much as he wants to move and hide his burning face Shintaro stays where he is.

"Yeah. Just thinking."

"Hm."

Shintaro strains his ears again, but he's still not in the right spot. They're lounged across the couch in one of the rooms further back in the house, away from the general clamor that rings steadily from the front living area, Shintaro sprawled on top of Konoha and both of them comfortable enough to snooze. Shintaro's ear is pressed just beneath Konoha's collarbone, too high up to hear a heart.

Ah, what the hell. Konoha has already felt him move and known it was more than an adjustment, and it's already been determined that he's as oblivious as anything, so why not. Shintaro wriggles a bit, trying futilely not to jab an elbow into Konoha's ribs, and eventually manages to move over the left side of his chest and press an ear to the white fabric of his shirt, all the while struggling to ignore the questioning gaze being thrown his way.

Konoha's chest rises and falls like before, a little bit faster, but Shintaro pretends that he doesn't notice. He closes his eyes, blocks out the noise drifting back from the rest of the Mekakushi Dan, and listens.

For a moment he doesn't hear anything, and he experiences a hopeless moment in which he thinks, I'm dating a robot. Not only am I gay, but my boyfriend is a cyborg with amnesia and a food obsession, and somehow I don't feel inclined to change anything. F-M-L. Momo will never let me hear the end of it.

Then he hears it. It's soft, faint, but it's there, a gentle, beating throb that signifies life.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

A small, happy laugh escapes him, and he fists the fabric of Konoha's shirt with the hand he isn't laying on top of. He opens his eyes and looks up with a small smile. Konoha blinks back at him before offering a happy, if slightly confused, smile of his own, and Shintaro finds himself laughing again.

"Shin?"

"Yeah, Ko?"

Konoha blinks again, with good reason. Shintaro has never shortened his name before. Shintaro can see words churning behind those red eyes, question marks pinging up before being put down again. Konoha isn't sure what to say.

"... Love ya, Shin."

You know, Shintaro hasn't laughed this much in years. It's a strange feeling, the urge to laugh, but when the bubbling chuckle escapes it is incredibly satisfying.

Oh, Konoha. What you do to me.

"The feeling's mutual."

It's impossible to say who starts it, but soon they're kissing, soft, sweet, and long. They stay like that for a good long while, no fire behind their actions, just a gentle warmth and a heartbeat that rings in Shintaro's ears long after he can no longer hear it.

He doesn't notice when the noise from the rest of the gang dies down, or the faint footsteps down the hall, or the whispers that are much closer than the front room. He doesn't notice the set of peeping eyes at the doorway that turns from one pair to two, then four, (if you count seeing through a camera as a pair of eyes) then six. He does, however, notice when the seventh and final observer arrives and comments.

"Oh, god. Mary, what did you haul us down here for? I so did not need to see that!"

Shintaro shoots away from Konoha and falls sideways off the couch, blood rising to his face way too quickly to be possible. "M-Momo?" His eyes focus and he somehow goes from red to redder. The entirety of the Mekakushi Dan is standing in the doorway, Mary in front and staring with wide eyes, tracking back all the way to Kano and Kido, the latter of which has her hand over her boyfriend's mouth to presumably keep him from laughing. Momo seems to have pushed herself through the crowd (How in the hell had they stayed so quiet?) to be just behind Mary and Hibiya and is looking with horror written all over her features.

"Onii-chan, you idiot! Get a room if you're going to be macking on your boyfriend, would you? Spare us, please!" She turns away, turns up her nose, snaps her head to somehow make her hair swish in a way that effectively shows her frustration, (Girls and hair- you'd think it's got muscles all its own.) and starts down the hall, lowering her voice a bit but purposefully leaving it just loud enough for him to hear. "Damn, and I thought the UST with Ayano was bad. Now I don't even know _who_ the guy is."

Shintaro chokes as she tosses back a smirk before sauntering away, and Kano manages to work himself free from Kido's grip. He quickly utilizes this freedom in the best way he knows how- laughing so hard he tears up. He laughs and laughs and just keeps on going, to the point where Shintaro wonder's how he isn't yet dead of oxygen deprivation.

"Hello, everybody," Konoha says, finally speaking. He has rolled onto his stomach, resting his chin on his hands and his hands on the arm of the couch. His shirt rides up a bit and Shintaro stares determinedly at the ceiling. "What's so funny, Kano?" Kano doubles over in response, and Shintaro would give anything to be able to make like Kido and disappear. Or maybe die. Are there any scissors nearby?

...That was so not funny.

Kido decides that she has had enough, apparently, and drags Kano by the arm away from the scene. Seto follows them, flashing a peace sign on his way. Hibiya holds up Ene so that she can say goodbye and give a parting jab at Shintaro's 'skills' (he'd rather not go over the specifics of what she said, because it would likely disrupt the T rating on the story) then runs off to find Momo. Only Mary is left in the doorway, and she parts with a giggle and a wink that sends a shiver down Shintaro's spine.

(He doesn't see the camera she has tucked into the folds of her dress, or the pictures stored on it. Perhaps he is better off not knowing.)

Shintaro releases his breath and sprawls backward on the floor. He closes his eyes. There is a disturbance in the air as Konoha slides from the couch and joins him on the carpet, and they sit there until Konoha gets bored with that position. Then he lays down too and snuggles up against Shintaro's side, and before Shintaro gets up the nerve to say anything there are soft snores drifting to his ears.

Definitely more human than not.


	2. Chapter 2: Imaginary Friend

Shintaro didn't have friends. His mother used to worry about it, fretting long and hard into the time that she had set aside for sleep. She felt that he wasn't developing socially and emotionally through his self-imposed isolation, which had been present since kindergarten, when he sat in the corner and scribbled senseless shapes that he insisted were perfectly meaningful and she just couldn't understand.

Overall, he was known as a 'problem child.'

She worried and worried as he went from kindergarten and through up to fifth grade, and when he entered middle school he approached her and said, "Stop. I'm fine with being alone. I want it."

She nodded tearfully, then dialed the school and requested he be approached by the counsellor.

And so it was that Shintaro Kisaragi entered entirely unnecessary (in his opinion) counselling and finally found the time to construct a mental safehouse. While the well-intentioned counsellor- Midorikawa-sensei, said the well-polished nameplate on her desk next to three gnawed pens and a bottle of white glue -prattled on inanely about emotional capacity and social openness, he closed his eyes and built himself a home.

It was an apartment, room number 107, with sparse furnishing and a minimalist layout. There were seats and a table, a kitchen, a sleeping space, a bathroom, and outside of those little else to begin with. That changed quickly. With everything new that he wanted to remember, Shintaro slowly began to fill the rooms with objects. They could be random, or logical, or anything in between, outlandish or real, representations of everything worth recalling.

A few of his most closely guarded mental possessions, the ones that he would never tell anyone about, were of Momo's rare moments of tolerability. Some days, when his semi-decent moods coincided with hers, they would sit down without a word and watch a movie, both pretending that the other didn't exist while they snuggled beneath the same red fleece blanket and fished in a giant bowl of cheap popcorn.

Then she died, drowned along with their father, and Mental Momo came into being. .

She looked exactly like Real Momo, generally acted like her too, but there were several differences that were obviously going to happen due to the simple fact that she was a construct of his mind. She was more patient than his real sister, more understanding of him. She knew when to leave him alone and when to press for information, when to tease and when to back off. She was, in essence, an idealized version of Momo.

Shintaro started holding conversations with Mental Momo. Not once did it cross his mind that he might not be quite right in the head, conversing with his dead sister in a fictional apartment room.

He continued to furnish the place, and one day Mental Momo got a companion. He couldn't say why he did it, exactly, couldn't give a real reason that would make sense to him or anyone else, but the best he could come to explaining it was that his chest felt funny looking at the child on the television screen and the thought of Mental Momo being alone suddenly didn't appeal in the slightest.

Mental Shuuya was loosely based off of a boy he had seen on the news, dead along with his abusive mother in an attack of retribution from idiot neighbors. He was likely the most annoying thing on Earth. Unlike Mental Momo, he wasn't idealized at all, just a beaten-up kid with self-esteem issues and a crippling sense of duty to be what others wanted him to be, and his lack of opinion drove Shintaro up the wall.

He was prone to fake smiles, like the one he had worn in the school photo the news station had presented, and often erupted into spontaneous bouts of tears when Shintaro showed any sort of displeasure with him. He was permanently bandaged, white ribbon around his left wrist and a thick wad of cotton on his cheek, a shiner and a slight limp. His hair, no matter how often Shintaro shoved him into the bathroom and told him to wash it, stayed matted and dull, coarse strands that sat close to his skull and looked rather like a small pile of dirty straw with a person attached.

Mental Momo absolutely adored him.

Shintaro should have seen it coming. She had always had a fondness for strays, had taken in a small cat a few years back and only relinquished it when they found that it wasn't stray at all, and Shintaro felt that Shuuya resembled nothing as much as he resembled that cat. He would often enter his mental apartment- he always materialized outside the door, always opened it and wondered what they would be up to this time -to find them fiddling around with his memories-turned-objects.

Momo dug out moments and explained them to her small charge, who listened from her lap with wide eyes and a momentary loss of his usually timid air. On most days Shintaro would give a small smile before taking inventory of his mental home, then return to them when the rounds were finished to protest at the embarrassing parts. Other days, when he was feeling particularly good, he would sit with them and tell a story himself, editing it shamelessly just to make Shuuya laugh when Momo corrected him. It was a good time.

He reached the eighth grade, still in counselling, still without any outward social progress, and proceeded to add two more children to his mental apartment. Tsunbomi and Kousuke were like Shuuya, borrowed faces from news feeds whose personalities were entirely fabricated by Shintaro based on the subtleties he observed from their pictures.

Tsunbomi's straight posture and blank expression had a strange feeling to them, as if rather than a yardstick spine she was actually curling into herself to hide. It made Shintaro a bit uneasy, the blankness of that stare, so while he was more than intelligent enough to know that there was more her than an arson victim, he stuck to what the reporter said and what the common deductions would be. Tsunbomi was an oddball out, so she seemed hunched over because she wanted to disappear. End of story.

Kousuke was an interesting one. It was his fault that the apartment suddenly found itself in possession of a dog, a canary, and a hamster, and it was his fault that Shintaro met Haruka.

Kousuke, in life, had been bullied. At least, Shintaro's version of Kousuke had. It was the reason he had come up with for why the boy had been so very desperate to save his dog, the only friend he had ever had, the reason he was dead and had so become an addition to Shintaro's virtual Dead Kid Sanctuary. Kousuke had also drowned, which made Shintaro think of Momo, which made Kousuke's opinion matter that much more important to him.

So, of course, it was all Kousuke's fault when Shintaro made it to tenth grade, saw a group of juniors talking trash to a freshman, and immediately felt the need to help.

Insults were thrown, quickly followed by punches. Eyes were blackened, groin shots were taken (though none connected), Shintaro was very quickly thrown to the floor, and all of them wound up in front of the principal for a good reprimand. There was a fair deal of initial confusion regarding who attacked whom and and what their reasons had been, courtesy of the bullies, until the victim stuttered out the truth and Shintaro looked at him properly for the first time.

The kid was, to put it plainly, fragile, with a delicate face and limbs resembling toothpicks. He was taller than Shintaro by quite a bit, but narrower, like someone had taken him through a taffy puller and not considered girth. His hair was a smooth sort of dark brown, his gait was slightly unsteady, and he had a bit of an overbite. He was also totally gorgeous.

Crap.

-/\-

They all served a three-day suspension, Haruka (that was his name, a wonderful name, one that Shintaro found himself rolling around in his mind like smooth glass marbles between his fingers) excluded. Over that time Shintaro retreated entirely within his head, emerging only when called for meals by his mother and sometimes not even then. Over that time he came to several realizations.

Firstly, Mental Momo could no longer be called Mental Momo. It was the strangest thing, but she had slowly lost the strange perfection she had used to carry. She started overstepping boundaries, talking when she shouldn't, falling into Momo's annoying habits, and just in general becoming more real. It was strange, but not unwelcome. Shintaro had his sister back.

(He still didn't consider that this might not be healthy.)

Secondly, his little group of midgets was getting older. Shuuya's face plainly showed the three years he had spent in Shintaro's head, and Momo was most definitely not the age she had been when she had died. Tsunbomi and Kousuke hadn't been there long enough to tell, but Shintaro was willing to bet that they would grow as well. It was intriguing that his mind could so realistically paint his companions, but he wasn't about to complain.

Thirdly, there was an outdoors to his apartment world. He could, rather than enter the room, make his way down the staircase to the lobby and exit the building. The path in the front of the place only extended about twenty feet before fogging up, but with time and vigorous imagining Shintaro was able to extend it and take the kids to a little park he conjured on the lawn. It was certainly better for them than being stuck in that room all day.

(It never occurred to him that they were constructs, they didn't need exercise, they didn't exist while he wasn't in the room with them. He never thought of them as anything other than real people while this was concerned.

He never thought he might be odd.)

And then fourthly, finally, he was completely lovesick over a stranger.

His head was clogged up with thoughts of Haruka, so badly that little grinning Haruka heads popped up at random places in the mindscape. It was embarrassing, and he got laughed at for it, but they had also laughed at him back when he was blushing over Ayano, so he was kind of used to being teased. It was just a part of the package, a completely necessary piece of running a Dead Kids' Home.

(That was before Ayano's parents had died and she had moved away to live with her grandmother. A shame. She was kind and smart and pretty and wonderful, and sometimes Shintaro wished it had been his own mother who got caught in a landslide just so that Ayano's smile could have stayed.)

Haruka, Haruka, Haruka. He couldn't wait for the stupid suspension could be over. He knew that the chances of catching the kid again weren't great, seeing as they were in different grades and the campus was extensive, but hope is hope and it spreads from brain cell to brain cell like some wild contagion of moon-eyed gazes.

Kousuke hopped deftly off of the end of the slide and sat by Shintaro on the bench. Oh no, Shintaro thought, he wants something. He never uses those eyes unless he wants something. He never tilts his head like that.

"Can we have another sister?"

Before Shintaro could get his mouth to close properly, Kousuke went on.

"Momo is the only girl. I mean, Tsunbomi is a girl, but she's not girly. She's really more of a boy. Momo is all alone, because even though I like to do things with her, I'm not a girl so ribbons aren't good on me. She loves Shuuya but he's like a brother, like you are, so that doesn't count, so I think she's really a little bit lonely, so can we please have another sister?"

And what could Shintaro say to that?

He started watching the news again and found absolutely nothing. He tried searching through the many websites of the recently dead, even went so far as to google 'dead kids,' and yet none of the children there seemed to want him.

When had he started thinking of it like that, that they wanted him? When he examined himself closely, he couldn't really tell. Mental Momo had been created in his weakness, his reluctance to let his sister die. They may not have been the closest of siblings, but he still loved her, and so he preserved her in a fictional world where she would live like she should have been able to on Earth.

Shuuya was impulsive. After seeing him in the news report Shintaro had made the split second decision to let him live on virtually.

Kousuke and Tsunbomi, though, that was probably where things changed. The decision to create them hadn't been quite so rushed feeling as Shuuya had been. It hadn't been a real choice, per se, more of an irrefutable urge that couldn't possibly be ignored. They were the ones to first want him. He didn't know how he knew, but he just did.

And, in an extremely frustrating perplexity, none of these other children in the obituaries had the same pull.

For the first two days back at school Shintaro saw nothing of Haruka and was in general very bored. On the third day they accidentally collided in the hallway, sending books and papers scattering so far that in the time it took to sort out whose things were whose Shintaro learned that Haruka was an artist, a firm supporter of environmental awareness, and physically frail to the point of frequent hospitalization. It didn't take any particular deductive skill to hear the whisper of 'terminal' behind the words.

How's that for a pick-me-up?

Still, like the masochist he was, he found himself getting closer and closer to the boy with the slight figure and the bright eyes, and in due time met Haruka's singular classmate. Takane took one look at him and declared him, 'the woobie,' which he would later learn to interpret as, 'the poor schmuck on the receiving end of trolling.' Haruka smiled and laughed like it was no big deal, but Shintaro did not trust that smile on Takane's face one bit.

And so began a long period of normalcy and a general feeling of happy. Well, for Haruka and Takane. For Shintaro it was more like a feeling of happy during Haruka Time and the sudden destruction of said happy when Takane entered the scene. She was diabolical, that girl, taking every opportunity to tease, poke, insult, and prank him to the very limits of human possibility. He vented often to Momo and company, who quickly grew bored with his moaning and told him to suck it up. In response he just stayed away from room 107 for a day, until he got fidgety and his hands started shaking and his neck itched constantly and his eyes got watery and he skipped school under the pretense of illness for a five-hour nap in the mental apartment and five more hours in the company of his little troupe.

Lesson learned; no ignoring the Dead Kids.

One day Haruka decided to give Shintaro a tour through his folder of sketches. They leafed through the papers together, Shintaro pressed up to Haruka's back to look over his shoulder, brown hair tickling his nose. It smelled like eucalyptus shampoo and, strangely enough, Elmer's glue.

"This is Konoha."

Haruka lifted a picture of a boy, white-haired and tall, with bulky headphones and pants that Shintaro thought must be filled with pillow fluff around the boots. Haruka looked fondly at the image.

"He's who I wish I could be."

Shintaro wanted very badly to say that he was perfect the way he was, but that probably wouldn't go over too well, would it.

Next was a blue version of Takane, which Shintaro didn't pay much attention to other than to note that she looked infinitely more cheerful than the real thing. The picture afterward, though, was the one that truly captured his attention.

"This is Mary," said Haruka, and his words drifted to Shintaro like wisps of fog on a wet morning. "She's a medusa, see? But she's only about a fourth, because she got it from her grandma… Hey, are you alright? You're a bit pale."

"I'm not the one who has to worry about my health," Shintaro retorted. "Mary. Tell me more?"

Mary was a sweet little girl with confidence issues, a small stature, and no skill in cooking, and Shintaro only needed to take a second look at her picture to know that she was the new addition to the family. There was something in the subtle forward curve of her shoulders that reminded him of Tsunbomi, something to the meek deadness of her gaze that brought Kousuke and Shuuya to mind, and then the fact that Momo would love to get her hands on a shy girl and turn her into something amazing just sealed the deal. Mary Kozakura would be the new sister.

"Really, Shintaro, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, and for the first time in too long he smiled in the real world and meant it.

-/\-

Hibiya and Hiyori were taken from news reports, hit simultaneously by an oncoming truck while crossing the street, and with them Shintaro felt that the family was complete. His head was awfully busy now, what with seven extra people running around in there, but he didn't mind in the slightest. They were all he needed for companionship and more, and if he had to delete a few things to make space for Hibiya's scribbled portraits and Seto's pets and Momo's wardrobe, so be it.

He might have simply ceased attending school if not for Haruka. It was for that smile that he returned each day, that smile and Takane's teasing that somehow made all the pointless schooling and time missed with the family worth it. Their voices and the way that Takane's hip swayed to the right when she was feeling irritated and the precise fall of Haruka's hair between his eyes drew Shintaro in like gravity. He fell into orbit like he was meant to be there- and who knows? Maybe he was.

None of their classes were together, but they secured permission from one of the nice teachers who sympathized with sick kids to stay afterward in one of the classrooms as an unlisted club with fewer members than were typically required.

(She was a very sympathetic teacher.)

They just sat and talked and did stupid things that were never quite stupid enough to get them into any real trouble, and one day while Shintaro was sitting on a desktop Haruka sat down close enough for their sides to touch.

It was like a gateway opening, and things moved quickly from there. The desk became their automatic seat, with Takane perched on the identical plane of polished wood across the aisle and the gentle warmth of the sun streaming through the window to caress the backs of their necks. Close sitting turned to leaning, leaning to harder leaning, harder leaning to hand overlapping to hand holding to ankle crossing to breaths incredibly close to the ear that made Shintaro's brain short out just a bit.

Then those became blushes and shyness and a stuttered invitation to coffee and an equally stuttered yes that sealed Shintaro's fate. Not that he knew it of course, and even if he had known it is dubious whether he would have done anything differently.

He almost never saw his mother anymore, barely remembered her face and didn't even wonder if forgetting something like that may be a problem. His attention was completely and utterly absorbed in his family of misfits, the girl who was his rival, and the beautiful creature who, by some astonishing miracle of the heart, saw fit to return his affections. Days rushed by in a cascade of the most happiness he had ever felt in his life, each minute a treasure and, for once, worth remembering.

(_Why? Why? Why must empires crumble? Why must dust sweep away light?_

_Why must we be so fragile?_)

-/\-

"This is the real world."

A bitter laugh escapes the patient's throat as he gazes blankly at the unblemished white of the ceiling. The air is cool, his breaths expelled warm like a lukewarm dragon's breath, and he sucks in more oxygen in an attempt to cool his core to nothingness.

"Reality is what you make of it."

"You use that in the most incorrect way I think I've ever heard it said."

"I don't want this reality. So I made a new one. It's real to me. These dreams, with you here, they're just that. Dreams. Because this world isn't the one I want."

The woman shifts in her chair, uncrossing her legs and re-crossing them in the opposite order. The patient cares for none of it. From his position on the beige carpet he sees only the tip of one shoe. It's brown, clean and polished, like everything else in the room. The furniture, including the chairs, somehow, is all spotless. The various 'relaxing' features are the same- the little glass jar with the scent sticks poking out, despite that the only liquid in the bottom is water, is gleaming. The ficus in the corner is painfully perfect and fake. The pot with the three shoots of bamboo standing on the table to the woman's right hardly seems to have enough dirt to warrant plant growth.

"Why not?"

"You've read my file, haven't you? It's all there."

"I prefer to work off of what my clients tell me."

A second laugh. "Clients. You make it sound as if we're here by choice."

"Aren't you?"

"This is a mental hospital. Of course we're not here by choice."

"If you wanted to you could walk right out that door. No one would stop you."

"Oh yes," says the patient cuttingly, "And no one would send a message to my mother to tell her that her son isn't responding to treatment and recommend that we take an altogether more expensive route, would they?"

The woman looks over her glasses in disapproval. "You say that as if the money would the be the only point of concern. The whole reason you here is to look after your mental health."

The patient sits up suddenly, and the sharpness of his gray gaze bores into her like a sudden bullet of thought. "If my mother cared about me as much as she cared about my father and Momo, she would have stopped me. She would have made me leave well enough alone."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," he hisses,"that she should have seen it and she should have stopped it before it began. She knew I was pulling inward and she didn't even try to talk to me. She just sent me to the counsellor and hoped that shoving off the burden of an antisocial, emotionally-handicapped son on someone else would solve the problem. I was forced to fix it myself, and then along the way I met him, and she didn't tell me to stop. She should have looked. She should have seen he was ill. She should have taken me away before I got hurt, and now I'm stuck with nobody in this world who cares about me and seven little kids in my head who do and tell me, which would you choose?"

There are words the woman could say at this moment. Specific words, five of them, and if she says them it will be one of the greatest breakthroughs of her career. She will say them and he will start crying and then the recovery will begin, and he will slowly lay to rest all of those who are already dead and finally start to live again. He will do it because this is his greatest vulnerable moment, one where he is completely open and the smallest set of syllables, if aimed correctly, can bring down all his lies.

(_Shintaro, I care. Please stay._ That's all he needs to hear.)

But she doesn't say them. She takes a moment to compose herself and a reply, and when she finally gives it Shintaro can no longer hear her. There is nothing in this world for him, so why not just let it slip away?

-/\-

In his mind he created a Konoha. At first he wanted to make a carbon copy of Haruka, down to the little mole on his cheek and the chime of his laugh, but none of it felt right, and Haruka's ideal self seemed the next best option. Takane felt all wrong too, so he used for her the blue form that Haruka had devised and carried her around in his phone. It seemed fitting, to have her where she could play all her games without interruption.

His apartment had grown into a sprawling neighborhood, full of empty houses and parks and sunshine. Every day the world expanded as the family tugged him beyond the borders. Each time there was a specific location they wanted to bring him to. Sometimes it was a store, other times an arcade. Today it was an amusement park, and Shintaro carefully crafted a place full of all the rides and attractions they could possibly want.

Time whirled by in a laughing blur, and his small ventures into the colder world become fewer and fewer. First it was multiple times a day to suffer through meals. Then he cut that down to two, then to one, until a perpetual hunger laid over him whenever he returned. They (the minders, the therapist, whoever was there) had to eventually force him out for so much as that, to keep him from skipping days altogether. After a while even that didn't work. He looked in the mirror once and could count every rib.

Which world was real? Which was the dream? Did it matter? His mother (who was that again? He was pretty sure her hair was dark. Right? Something like that, but he didn't think too hard on it.) might be worried. Would she? Did he care?

He threaded his fingers between Konoha's and leaned a head on the white-clothed shoulder. Ruby eyes rested questioningly on him for a moment, then passed it off as another Shintaro thing with a gentle squeeze of the hand. Shitnaro smiled and closed his eyes, listening as the little ones squealed and shouted in play. Here he had Konoha, had Takane, had Momo, had everyone who mattered. Did he care about what the specters in that falsehood called 'real life' thought?

No. He didn't.

He never emerged again.

-/\-

"Ms. Kisaragi?"

The woman breathes deeply through her nose before opening her eyes. She is greeted with far too much white and a clipboard.

"Are you certain you want to do this?"

She stares at the clipboard, the straight-edged papers, the neat lines of black ink. A pen dangles from a slender chain. A lifeline, she thinks before she can stop herself, like all the little tubes and wires and beeping things that surround him right now to keep him at some semblance of alive. She fights down another laugh. Alive? Don't be ridiculous.

"He could still be saved."

A bitter smile curves the woman's lips, and all hesitation finally disappears. The pen rolls gracefully across the expanse of white, and Momoko Kisaragi signs her son's life away.

"No. He can't."

And that's the end of that.

A/N- This wound up a looooot longer than I thought it would, and I'm not nearly as happy with it as I was with Breaths. Ah, well. I reeeally needed to update this, and there's nothing like some existential angst and character death to start your day off right.


End file.
